First STi units...were when?

[Xesh]

XT one is not the 1990 versions, but the revised versions of 1991 with SLR+ (I still love the look of the window in the XT unit here)

I had that entire groupset on my first decent ATB. I'd saved my paper round money for ages and managed to get a clearance Saracen Trekker comp frameset to put it on.

After a couple of weeks some thieving git nicked it by cutting the fence it was locked to, when I left it in town once. :evil: :evil:

 

[reanimation]

You hardly see these on builds on here. Well thumbies are preferred and ya hadly see em for sale. Were they all crap then?

I seemed to have no prob with my paper round 1990 200GS shifters (levers plastic broke though on a crash), 1991 Suntour Xpress, and 1990/1 300LX. Ran all of em a year though and poss not in anger. my mate had the 91 DX shifters.

 

[elite504]

I agre with fluffychecken, 89 for '90.
XT servowaves were actually pretty powerful, and the shifters were cool- you could sweep the whole block. Rapidfire plus was 2 years later IIRC, '92, with trigger and thumb. I've been looking for some early XT rapidfire for a project. I quite like em. Not with V's though.. . .

 

[legrandefromage]

The ratchets on the XT STi were very weak compared to the LX versions and wore out very quickly. Later stuff was far more robust.

 

[FluffyChicken]

I'm not a thumbies fan.

but anyway,
they where not crap, pretty good but rapidly replaced by RapidFire+ in 1992 and of course XTR came out at that same time offsetting XT to be in a hard place in the line up, what with LX advancing 4 groupsets was hard to have (and why DX went a bit later).
The other one was GripShift quick influx into the market..
Whilst people where reluctance to go from the tried and trusted thumbies at the time.
That and you couldn't buy them in purple.

Who would have thought a small company making a twist shifter, ends up owning half of the good old retro products companies :roll:

 

[hamster]

The pivot screws had a nasty habit of unscrewing and then the whole thing would disintegrate spectacularly in a cloud of tiny cams and springs. Happened to me in 1992 somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Cheviots. An early introduction to singlespeeding (well, triplespeeding actually)...

 

[Rabbit171]

I've got Deore DX STI's on my Alpinestar. They work as well today as they did when I bought the bike in 1990 lovely response and the two fingered brake levers are terrific!

 

[john the sparky]

yeah.... I have DX rapidfire, and still like it, and it still works well....

and I agree the brake levers are really nice

but... it does do my head every time I ride rapidfire+ then ride rapidfire :?